One in three black men in the United States has been charged with a felony. In North Carolina, black men are incarcerated at four times the rate of white men. And here, as in most states, that can mean harsh restrictions on your right to vote. So even if we think these laws are unfair, the opportunity to influence them is taken from our hands. These experiences led me to want to get involved in the political process.

I voted in the 2008 and 2012 elections. I had trouble with the law again after that, but I was committed to turning my life around. I decided to practice my right to vote once again in 2016. I was told that I could and that I should, because it was the most important election of my life. I didn’t realize at the moment that I would be targeted, prosecuted, and threatened with yet another felony — and two years in prison — for exercising that right.

For me it’s important that we call this what it is: voter suppression. Other policies — including a proposed voter ID constitutional amendment, polling site closures and early voting restrictions, and partisan and racial gerrymandering — hope to do the same. I’ve suffered severe consequences to exercise my right to vote. Is it because politicians are afraid of poor and working people like me actually having a say in how we run things?

Sellars was one of five people from the “Alamance 12” who took a plea deal to lesser charges than felony voter fraud.

As part of the deals, Alamance County prosecutors dropped all felony voting-related charges for the five voters, who were represented by the Southern Coalition for Social Justice. Sellars and the other four individuals each pleaded instead to a charge of misdemeanor obstruction of justice.

The were sentenced to 24 hours of community service and 12 months of unsupervised probation. You can read Sellars’ full column here.

One Comment

Steve Harrison

November 20, 2018 at 10:51 am

Just a silver lining footnote on this story: The District Attorney (Pat Nadolski) who was so adamant about pushing these prosecutions, most likely to firm up his cred with local racists, not only lost his Primary race earlier in the year, he also just lost a different election to fill a Judge’s seat. Back to the private sector, dude.